A Good High Place

Chapter 7

c H A P T e R S e V e N i woke stiff this morning. old age is not something i’ve adjusted to gracefully. i was out on the front porch sweeping off the dead branches and winter debris when clark Gable (John Mitchell) happened by, apparently on one of his morning walks. He wanted to chat, but i was in my terry-cloth robe, so i waved and headed for the door. He gave me a quick salute, fingers touching the brim of the flat, plaid wool cap he was wearing. i don’t really consider men anymore in the sense of keeping one. i think of borrowing an evening’s companionship, a couple of willing feet to guide me around a dance floor. Anyway, i knew John had been keepingtimewithAnnaWilsonthelastfiveorsoyears.Butseeing John got me thinking about what he’d said about the town and its character. elk Rapids imported people like you’d import caviar or two-bit cigars. There were several types. The gamblers (speculators is too directed a word for most of them) arrived first. They were followed bylumbermenofvariousskills,primarilyfromcanadaorMichigan’s Upper Peninsula. But real immigrants as well, men who made their way from places like ireland, France, Germany, Norway. Primitive men who lived for the moment and the off chance, enticed here by the barest whisper of green gold, as they called it, white pine so abundantthat“Godmusthavestartedstammerin’whenhesaid,‘let there be p-p-p-pine.’” River men, sawyers, bull whackers, scalers, chore boys, road monkeys—all found their way here. There were no jobs for the fainthearted. They came because dexter & Noble co. was producing between three and four million board feet of lumber annually by 1865. And just after the turn of the century, elk Rapids had a sawmill, ironworks, a cement plant, a chemical plant, an electric plant, a hardwood-flooring plant, a bowling alley, and a bicycle club. Not to mention more than half a dozen saloons. They arrived with everything they owned wrapped in a bindle, and most of them would leave with exactly that. Then there were the hold-down-the-forters. The day-to-day types who planned to be in it for the long haul, hoping the lumber boom would last long enough for civilization to catch hold and make a place for them. Bankers, merchants, potato farmers, fruit growers. doctors, lawyers, indian chiefs—the Anishinaabek have been holding down the fort since the Stone Age. And then there was cap. cap’s not exactly the rough lumberman type. He’s more the kind of guy who rides on his coattails. originally from ontario, cap accompanied hisfather, ablacksmith bytrade, in1862. Horsesnever had the draw for cap that the water did, so he became a boat captain instead: dredged rivers for the lumber trade, hauled light freight for area merchants, and transported the summer trade around the inland waterway—the kind of guy who plans to stay as long as opportunity exists, without plans for when it doesn’t. A tweener. everyone in town calls him cap, as if he’s the only one, though there are dozens of boat captains in town. The rest get called captain French or captain Hawley or sometimes just by their first names. i’M NoT THiNKiNG ABoUT TWeeNeRS this day in 1915 or about gamblers or hold-down-the-forters but instead about creeks. About how i’m hoping not to share this one. At least not today. Yuba creek originates in the swamps near Williamsburg and empties into 46 L.E. Kimball Grand Traverse Bay. it’s shrouded in overhanging willows, tamaracks, and cedar sweepers, and is a pretty decent trout stream when it wants to cooperate. Masses of alder thickets protrude into the creek bed, narrowing it and eliminating the possibility of any type of back cast. But the roll cast or a short side cast will suffice most of the time. August. The drakes are hatching, which makes it too bad i can’t get over to Rapid River. or better, the north branch of the Boardman, a river i fish now and then, though it isn’t my river. it willneverspilloveritsbanksformeorleavemeparchedinseasonal droughts. Will never coax me through the bends or drag me into sinkholes the way Yuba creek will. There’s something to be said for recognizing your river. But flies are hatching, something small like a blue-winged olive or a yellowstone...